System-Level Modeling of an ICE-powered Vehicle with Thermoelectric Waste-Heat-Utilization

The reduction of automotive fuel consumption is a major challenge of automotive OEMs and suppliers. It is expected, that during the next decade the majority of vehicles will still be driven by internal combustion engines (ICE). As a rule of thumb about 2/3 of the fuel energy fed to the engine is converted into heat and is used only occasionally and only partly for heating the interior. One promising technology to convert exhaust heat into usable electric energy is the thermoelectric generator (TEG) [1]. As this component has significant retroactive effects on the automotive system, a system-level model of the car was developed to calculate the net benefit of the TEG for steady-state operating-points as well as for dynamic driving cycles. This paper presents a model and simulation results of an ICE-powered vehicle with thermoelectric wasteheat-utilization. The model uses component models of the AlternativeVehicles-, VehicleInterfaces-, PowerTrain- and YaFluid-Library.